US President Donald Trump insisted on Sunday that Ukraine and Russia were “closer than ever” to a peace deal as he hosted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at his Florida resort, but he acknowledged that negotiations could still fail and allow the war to drag on for years.
The president’s statements came after the two leaders met for a discussion that came after what Trump called an “excellent” two-and-a-half hour phone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose invasion of Ukraine sparked the war four years ago. Trump insisted he believed Putin still wanted peace, even as Russia launched a new round of attacks on Ukraine while Zelensky flew to the United States for the latest round of negotiations.
“Russia wants to see Ukraine succeed,” Trump said at a late afternoon news conference following a meeting with Zelensky, whom he repeatedly praised as “courageous.”
Both Trump and Zelensky acknowledged that thorny questions remain, including whether Russia can keep the Ukrainian territory it controls. After their discussion, they convened a large group of European leaders, including Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, and the leaders of Finland, France, Germany, Britain and Poland.
Zelensky thanked Trump for his work. “Ukraine is ready for peace,” he said.
Trump and Putin will talk again. Trump said he would follow the meeting with another call to Putin. Earlier on Sunday, Putin’s foreign affairs adviser, Yuriy Ushakov, said the Trump-Putin call was initiated by the US side, lasted more than an hour and was “friendly, benevolent and pragmatic.” Ushakov said Trump and Putin agreed to speak again “promptly” after Trump’s meeting with Zelenskyy.
But Ushakov added that a “bold and responsible political decision is needed by kyiv” on the hotly contested Donbass region in eastern Ukraine and other disputed issues for there to be a “complete cessation” of hostilities.
Overnight, three guided aerial bombs launched by Russia hit private homes in the eastern city of Sloviansk, according to the head of the local military administration, Vadym Lakh. Three people were injured and one man died, Lakh said in a message posted on messaging app Telegram.
The strike comes a day after Russia attacked the Ukrainian capital on Saturday with ballistic missiles and drones, killing at least one person and injuring 27 others, Ukrainian authorities said. Explosions erupted across kyiv when the attack began early in the morning and continued for hours.
Trump, however, said he still believed Putin was “very serious” about ending the war.
“I think Ukraine has also launched some very violent attacks,” Trump told reporters as Zelensky stood beside him. “And I don’t mean this in a negative way. I think you probably have to. I don’t mean this in a negative way. But I think he didn’t tell me this, but there were explosions in various parts of Russia. It seems to me that I don’t know. I don’t think it came from the Congo.” Trump stressed that it was possible that the negotiations could fail. “In a few weeks we’ll know one way or the other, I think… But it could also go wrong.” The face-off between Trump and Zelensky underscored the apparent progress made by Trump’s top negotiators in recent weeks, as the sides exchanged draft peace plans and continued to hammer out a proposal to end the fighting. Zelenskyy told reporters Friday that the 20-point draft proposal discussed by negotiators was “about 90 percent ready,” echoing a figure and optimism expressed by U.S. officials when Trump’s chief negotiators met with Zelenskyy in Berlin earlier this month.
During recent negotiations, the United States agreed to offer Ukraine certain security guarantees, similar to those offered to other NATO members. The proposal comes as Zelensky says he is ready to abandon his country’s candidacy for the security alliance if Ukraine benefits from NATO-like protection, intended to protect it against future Russian attacks.
‘Intense weeks ahead’ Zelensky also spoke on Christmas Day with US special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law. The Ukrainian leader said they discussed “some substantive details” and warned that “there is still work to be done on sensitive issues” and that “the coming weeks could also be intense.”
The US president has worked to end the war in Ukraine for much of his first year in office, venting anger at both Zelensky and Putin while publicly acknowledging the difficulty of ending the conflict. The days when, as a candidate in 2024, he boasted of being able to resolve fights in a day are long gone.
After welcoming Zelensky to the White House in October, Trump demanded that Russia and Ukraine stop fighting and “stop at the battle line,” implying that Moscow should be able to hold on to the territory it captured from Ukraine.
Zelensky said last week he would be ready to withdraw his troops from Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland as part of a plan to end the war, if Russia also withdrew and the area became a demilitarized zone monitored by international forces.
Putin wants Russian gains to be retained, and Putin has publicly stated that he wants all areas of four key regions that have been captured by his forces, as well as the Crimean peninsula, illegally annexed in 2014, to be recognized as Russian territory. He also insisted that Ukraine withdraw from some areas of eastern Ukraine that Moscow’s forces have not captured. Kyiv has publicly rejected all these demands.
The Kremlin also wants Ukraine to abandon its NATO candidacy. He warned that he would not accept the deployment of troops from the military alliance and that he would consider them a “legitimate target”.
Putin also said Ukraine must limit the size of its army and grant official status to the Russian language, demands he made from the start of the conflict.
Ushakov told the “Kommersant” business daily this month that Russian police and national guards would remain in parts of Donetsk — one of the two main regions, along with Luhansk, that make up the Donbass region — even if it becomes a demilitarized zone under a future peace plan.
Ushakov warned that trying to reach a compromise could take a long time. He said U.S. proposals that took Russian demands into account had been “worsened” by changes proposed by Ukraine and its European allies.
Trump has been somewhat receptive to Putin’s demands, arguing that the Russian president can be persuaded to end the war if kyiv agrees to cede Ukrainian lands in the Donbas region and if Western powers offer economic incentives to bring Russia back into the global economy.
Published on December 29, 2025
